


glencairn

by cellardweller



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23226580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cellardweller/pseuds/cellardweller
Summary: Tyrathan Khort goes on and on -- another man has his family and Vol'jin is in a grave. All he has is the ghost of an old promise that he intends to keep.
Relationships: Tyrathan Khort/Vol'jin
Comments: 12
Kudos: 30





	glencairn

**Author's Note:**

> It's a bit choppy, maybe not quite vignettes but close. I love this ship and I hope I did it some justice. Thank you for reading, please consider leaving a comment I eat those for sustenance.

There’s an art to the way he goes about his daily tasks with bitter intensity, with all the self-satisfaction of a man dragging himself along on two broken legs. He doesn’t take pleasure in much anymore, but the hard  _ thump  _ of an arrow hitting his target, precisely where he aimed it -- that must come close. Slowly, methodically, he removes the arrow, cleans it, and replaces it in his quiver.

Though he made Stranglethorn Vale his home for a considerable time in the past, the cataclysm had torn deep scars in the earth and wrenched water from the depths onto unbroken land. Tyrathan’s maps were now incorrect, technically. That gives him something to put energy into. The scratch of a pen against parchment, flexing his fingers and staring up at the vastness of the starlit sky on the nights he can’t sleep. 

When he doesn’t hunt, he walks. Skirting along the outside edge of the whirlpool, casting cautious, almost wistful glances at the Horde’s outpost along the beach in the distance and the Alliance fort on the hill above him, he looks alive. The tenacity of his careful movement, biting the inside of his cheek against the persistent pain in his long-healed leg, puts a fire in his eyes. 

He sits atop high rises and peaks, sections of a larger map resting on a book in his lap. With the light of the morning sun he looks out around him and tediously strokes estimations with a thoughtful expression. For hours he can sit in one spot and lose himself in a new map, carving out minute details and flourishes when the broader lines have been drawn. He does this in silence mostly, only sometimes breaking the stillness with a softly hummed tune. After a few instances of this does he finally realize it’s a tune they often heard during supper at the Monastery. 

By sunset he has hunted, or not, and taken what he needs back to his modest dwelling near the cape, along the savage coast. 

So deep within the wilds still, he couldn’t relax completely, but here he could keep an eye on the nearest faction settlements and watch for ships along the coast. Relaxation didn’t come easily to the hunter anymore, but it helped that he seemed to have struck up some manner of kinship with the beasts, enough so that they don’t bother him when they recognize his approach. Tyrathan never thought about it too deeply, simply counted it as one of the few blessings he still has.

He sets his boots by the door and, this night, has a few bundles of herbs he hangs by the window to dry. Sometimes there’s fish or meat he sets out or fruits and vegetables to preserve, but tonight it’s only the herbs, sparse and interesting. It’s not clear why he cared to collect them at all until he’s changed into comfortable attire and plucks a few leaves and buds from their stalks. 

By nightfall he wanders down to the coast, carefully picking his way down the rocky incline, a few items tucked away in his bag. As soon as he hits the sand he takes a few tentative steps towards the water and drops to his knees. 

A mortar and pestle come out of the pack, as well as the herbs and flint. It’s obvious what he’s trying to do, has tried to do for a while now, before he even makes a spark. Unfortunately the only soul around who can tell him he’s wasting his time cannot speak, cannot bear a thought in his direction. 

Tyrathan crushes the herbs together and sets them alight, the flame casting his face into a harsh profile as he breathes in. A low, dulcet prayer passes his lips in heavy Zandalari, his hands open, out in front of him in supplication. It’s an odd position for a human to be in, a surreal vision that may have never been appreciated in the past. 

For all their wars, their years of misery and slaughter, who could have guessed it would culminate here in the white sands of Stranglethorn, with a human on his knees begging for an audience with the great Bwonsamdi. His words are a feather against the wild winds, thrown away as soon as they come into existence. Tyrathan doesn’t yet experience the freedom of knowing all his struggle is for nothing. 

“I won’t stop,” he says to himself in Common, and that’s classic Tyrathan. He’s staring out at the water, breathing deeply and composing himself. 

Vol’jin stands between him and the lapping waves of the ocean, staring down at Tyrathan’s bowl of offerings. It’s a good concoction -- Vol’jin can’t deny that his human, for what little time they shared between Pandaria and the Broken Shore, had soaked up more than he expected. Ultimately, Vol’jin shrouds him from the loa, selfishly, until he figures out what’s going on. 

Imagine if they had had more time. 

The ascent back up to his home is markedly more somber. He gets undressed with a slow, painful swagger, flopping onto the edge of his bed with his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands. He runs a hand through his unkempt hair and looks up, staring into the darkness beyond his window. 

Some nights he falls asleep to a distant clash at the arena, a flash of light, but tonight it’s black as pitch and terribly silent. He doesn’t lie down; he simply pinches the bridge of his nose and breathes deep for so, so long. 

Vol’jin watches this, as he watches everything else, miserable and frustrated. While Tyrathan draws his maps and performs small rituals doomed to fail, he rages against the veil that holds them apart. His spirit cries out to be seen, and certainly he should have been strong enough to be heard across the realm but he feels like a bow without an arrow -- all potential. Something won’t let him go, but won’t draw him too close. 

Vol’jin watches the human breathe and meditate until he decides to lie down, tucking a bundle of his blankets under his bad leg and wrapping himself around a pillow, restless for hours until he falls asleep. 

*******

Something became remarkably different about the Warchief since his death. Bwonsamdi has not come to him and he does not speak. Vol’jin wanders like a ghost, an echo of the demon’s poison pricks him like needles from his heart to his belly, and he watches Tyrathan. 

He passed to some dark place, hardly remembered, and came back to the land of the living as an intruder. Restless, but out of boredom rather than torment. Time passes around him like the wind, every pleasure he once had eludes him except for one. 

The Warchief used to watch Tyrathan at the Monastery, after the initial hatred wore itself down to nothing, then to affection. He would watch him target practice and clearly outshoot some of the best archers the troll had ever met, as far as he could tell. He watched the hunter tend to chores and scale the snowy hillside, watched him toss and turn in his sleep. After the hunter followed him to Draenor, Vol’jin watched him stalk orcs from the shadows and watched the rise and fall of his chest as they slept on the ground, the human curled up into his chest. Vol’jin would watch his eyes, and his hands, and every other damn little thing, and he could only imagine that the hunter watched him as well, occasionally. 

Far be it from him to ever complain about having to look at Tyrathan for too long, but this is something else.  _ At least let me speak to him,  _ he thinks. 

After Tyrathan falls asleep, Vol’jin takes a walk. He has an idea, born from empathy. 

There’s a high peak near  Zul'Gurub, near the clouds and sacred in its towering presence. It faces the ocean and the east, and though these grounds are not Darkspear, Vol’jin is welcome. 

What he’s about to attempt, he’s seen Tyrathan do occasionally, which may be the hunter’s own standard by which he attempts to summon Bwonsamdi - having watched Vol’jin attempt the same. He hopes, coming from that place in his heart, he will be judged worthy. 

Vol’jin sits on the top of this high rise and closes his eyes. In the last moments of the night, the troll calls out to the Light -- and in the glow of the rising sun, something answers. 

*******

“Ya faced many kings in ya life, Vol’jin. It be fittin’ now, seein’ what ya become.” The Warchief could have gone longer without having to suffer Bwonsamdi, but he has a feeling they’ll see a lot more of each other for a very long time, so he reaches inside and draws from the deepest well of his patience. 

“Da fel magic dat claimed me in life, turned to light in death. Ironic, I be believin’ is da word Tyrathan would use,” Vol’jin says, touching his chest. “I just had to give it a nudge.” 

Bwonsamdi taps his fingertips together, smiling. “Who better dan a shadow hunter to lead da Zandalari down da path of righteousness.” He laughs, deep and foreboding. 

The two of them sit in the shadow realm, conversing. Vol’jin isn’t yet used to this place, or how it feels to have the Light surge through him, free as blood. He needs this conversation to end as soon as possible, yearning to return to the land of the living. 

“Dis is not da reason I came here,” Vol’jin says, leading. 

“Ah, Tyrathan again, eh? Ya really be tryin’ to speak to da human! He not be knowin’ any way to see ya ugly face again, Vol’jin,” Bwonsamdi says, low and teasing. 

Vol’jin feels immediately as if there’s something that the loa of death isn’t telling him upfront. He watches his face carefully. “We bein’ as close as we are, it be possible.” 

Bwonsamdi laughs; he was never one to be sugared by the thought of intimacy. “Ahh, had ya taught him somethin’ in ya time together? Some old magic, a trick to see da wild gods?”

Vol’jin leans forward, a low burn building up in his chest. For not the first time in his life, this loa is getting under his skin. “Somethin’ like dat. As many trolls as he has killed, and as clever as he is, he be learnin’ somethin’, I know it.”

It may be a trick of the space, but it looks like shadows gather under Bwonsamdi, a warning. Despite this, he keeps a smirk on his face. “He be prayin’, anyway. I hear him mutterin’ about ya, but he does not know da way. He will plunder his own grief until he is nothin’ more dan a ghost.” Vol’jin clenches his fists at his sides. Bwonsamdi leans back, leisurely. “Especially if he follows dem visions I be givin’ him in his dreams.” 

Vol’jin stands with a blinding flash of sunrise light, enraged. There’s hardly a thing he can do but challenge Bwonsamdi with his stature, bringing himself to his full height. The loa of death hardly has the advantage on him; anyone with a brain could talk Tyrathan into the mouth of certain death. Selfishly, Vol’jin lingers on the idea that he could be reunited with his human sooner than he expected and his light dims, just enough for Bwonsamdi to lower his hands -- he hadn’t even retaliated, hadn’t thought the challenge worth the effort. 

With a heavy sigh, Vol’jin lets the tension bleed from his shoulders and he stares at Bwonsamdi, who opens his hands expectantly. 

A long moment of silence passes, and Bwonsamdi breaks it. “Ya know, I almost had him, once.”

Vol’jin smiles. “Nah, he be mine from da beginnin’.” 

“Is that so?”

“And he be mine now, as many deaths I be honoring ya with, I earned one to keep.” 

Bwonsamdi raises an eyebrow, leans back with a mixture of surprise and satisfaction. “And ya be choosin’ dis one,” he says.    
  
Vol’jin nods, conjuring holy light in the palm of his hand. Not a challenge, but a promise. “And I be choosin’ dis one.” 

*******

Tyrathan knew - he  _ knew  _ \- that this was a deathtrap. Not that Bwonsamdi had misled him -- quite the opposite. The hunter knew what the loa meant when he said to seek the Broken Shore for Vol’jin’s killer, that Tyrathan would go to any length to keep his promise. 

It felt like too far at the moment, just for a moment. 

The hunter did his best, lost count of how many demons he tore through on his own. His quiver lay empty somewhere on the field, with not an insignificant amount of his blood and three dozen corpses -- easy. 

It didn’t matter to him which specific demon struck the blow -- it was the Legion that brought down his love and killed him. To make a dent at all would be enough. 

Tyrathan sucks in a shallow breath and peers out of his rocky hideout. The beasts roam aimlessly, searching for the source of the carnage. Just beyond them, the rocky outline of the mountain range and the blue-red sunrise starting to creep up over the horizon. 

A surge of pain burns at his heart and knocks the wind out of him, forces him back into his hiding spot. He presses a shaking, bloody hand on the gaping wound in his chest, tries to steady himself. The hunter leans his head back against the rocks and struggles to take a deep breath, the lightheadedness taking away from the satisfaction and attention his death had earned. 

He stares down at his wound and watches as the luminescent corruption gradually moves through his bloodstream, glowing from under his skin. Horrifying, he thinks, to witness this himself. There’s a low roar in his ears, in the back of his head. He tenses up as the corruption reaches his neck -- a pang of misery as he wonders if Vol’jin felt all this in the same capacity that the hunter does in this moment. 

Not yet, he thinks, not yet. 

Tyrathan bites back every ounce of it and crawls out of his hideout. A few of the demons turn and look, straighten from their crouched positions over their fallen kin. None of them move to attack, as though they know they’re looking at a dying creature. The hunter wants to die out in the open, amidst his work. 

At least, he thinks as the rot overtakes his body and the clarity begins to slip from his mind, at least wherever Vol’jin had gone, his hunter may now go too. 

He swears, spits the blood from his mouth, and calls out to the Light. And in the glow of the rising sun, something answers. 


End file.
